Interlude 2 - Three Days in Space Dock
by Wedjatqi
Summary: ALLIANCE FIC – Following on from 'In Choice And Freedom' Teyla has 3 days of downtime through which to come to terms with her decision regarding her future and her decision about John, but for the Elite of the Sythus, so much can happen in 3 days of free time. An ELITE fic.
1. Prologue

**Title:** Interlude 2 - Three Days in Space Dock  
**Chapter: **1 – Prologue  
**Part**: 1/20  
**Rating**: M  
**Warnings:** AU world, violence, swearing, horror, and Satedans.  
**Disclaimers**: I earn no money from this, and I own no part of the Stargate world, only the characters that I create for myself.  
**Spoilers**: Set in established AU world, set in equivalent time to mid season 3.

**Note:** This fic is designed as a short linking fic between two larger stories. It is also important to note that this is an ELITE fic, and therefore Atlantis and John do not appear, but are of course mentioned constantly throughout. Everything has a purpose, I promise, and all will become clear by the end of this short fic. I hope people can still enjoy it. Wedjatqi x

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**Chapter 1 – Prologue**

_Distant Edge of the Pegasus Galaxy, approx 10,000 years ago _

The flickering brilliance of the gateway shone brightly across the vast screen. The entrance to the pocket was still holding, perfectly balanced on the knife-edge of the tearing nature of the technology splitting space and time apart.

Alcamenes watched with fixed focus as the last ships slid into the eye of the pocket's entrance, sliding into the small contained pocket outside of normal space that he had forged. He dropped his gaze to the console before him that had been his focus for almost an entire cycle of his life. Beneath his fingertips, the warm responsiveness of the console was comforting. All was working as predicted.

Not like the last experiment.

This time he had perfected the entrance, controlling the frequencies and energy balance perfectly. This time there would be no devastating black hole left at the entrance to the pocket, bent on drawing in any passing innocents. This pocket was stable and once closed would be undetectable and would hold forever – or at least as long as any calculation could predict.

And it needed to. It was vital that it did.

In all that his people had done, served, and created, it was their ignorance and indifference to the powers of evolution that had brought about the greatest cost. The natural mixing of insectoid DNA with newly evolving humanity had been an amazing revelation, even to Alcamenes' people. It had been wondrous to observe the newly evolving hybrids, to watch its subspecies develop, die away, and the genetic balances naturally stabilise.

They should have known such a thing could not be safe to allow.

For the creatures had hidden dark secrets on their world; their need to feed on other living beings had been far more terrifying than had first been realised. It had taken the scientists too long to realise the loss of human numbers on that planet had had a very specific cause, and that the new creatures' lust for understanding technology had all served a purpose realised too late to be prevented.

It would perhaps be the greatest failure Alcamenes had ever seen caused by his people's hand. Living easily in the great city, they had grown too relaxed, too willing to give free rein to that which was perhaps unnatural, despite the creatures' varying seemingly natural evolutions.

And once free of the constraints of their one homeworld, one new species, Wraith as they called themselves, had spread like a disease, consuming and multiplying like a fatal virus. Their viciousness, the like of which had not been witnessed in more centuries than Alcamenes' people could recall, had been overwhelming. And a response had formed far too slowly and almost too late.

But there had been hope, even in the ruined seemingly empty forests of the Wraith's birth planet.

A way of fighting back with the like-minded.

Only that too had failed. What had seemed like saviours had become almost as worse.

They at least would now be contained. The weapons that they were.

It was a sad day though - sad for these beings, regretful for Alcamenes, but still ultimately necessary. They would be able to live out their natural lives in the pocket, isolated away from the rest of the galaxy, away from the death and destruction they had caused.

The console sent a vibration up Alcamenes' arm, confirming near completion.

Yet...one ship remained at a distance. Alcamenes triggered up the view of the ship on the screen before him.

Behind him, his two technicians shifted their stances slightly, betraying the first signs of nervousness. He trusted them to be careful with their thoughts and their feelings though. After all, the three of them had been selected for this mission not just because of their advanced technical skill, but because they were able to so skilfully and absolutely hide their thoughts and feelings from the one stood to Alcamenes' left.

Alcamenes would have preferred there not be one of their kind on the Guardian vessel, but there had been no way to exclude an observer without betraying the true nature of the mission.

This mission to trap them all away.

This one remaining on the outside would never be allowed to leave this tiny vessel that stood at the pocket's entrance.

Alcamenes had designed Guardian to withstand time and the likely shift of gravity within this system. It would be able to survive either a close orbit with the system's star or the deepest cold of the outer reach of the system. It was the pocket's holding point, but outside of space itself, the pocket would never be discovered.

It meant that Alcamenes and his technicians could not leave as well, not now. They would contain this last creature, and then enter into the hibernation chambers. The Guardian had been sealed from the outside, launched from inside a ship, so it had no airlock to the outside. Alcamenes knew he would not see the great city again, would not fight in battle again, but he could serve here on Guardian, awakened if necessary to oversee that the pocket's stability. That the creatures would never escape.

Except, the last of their ships was not entering the entrance to the pocket. It was stationary at a good distance away.

Alcamenes looked to his left, looking up at the pale face of Assh-Uk, the last creature stood beside him. Locking his thoughts and emotions even deeper inside than normal, Alcamenes formed only specific communicative thoughts to it.

"_They must enter the pocket,_" he sent to Assh-Uk.

Assh-Uk's slit pupils lowered to meet Alcamenes' gaze. The blue veins across the pale skin seemed to hum with its strange alien nature.

"_They leave, return when ready,_" Assh-Uk's thoughts arrived with their usual solid suddenness that was uncomfortable for many of Alcamenes' colleagues.

"_The mission will not succeed if the Wraith detect you,_" Alcamenes argued. The last ship still had time to enter the pocket, but if not, they would be dealt with by the Bellerophon, Alcamenes' former ship, which hung in space further out in the system. _"You must all be hidden, ready to spring the trap upon them._"

"_One ship, no harm,"_ Assh-Uk responded, the words arriving abruptly inside Alcamenes' head. The words were the best that Alcamenes' brain could draw on to interpret the alien's psychic message. And along with those words, Alcamenes could sense Assh-Uk's determination. There would be no discussion and the true mission could not be risked now. If Assh-Uk became suspicious, then the others could exit the pocket.

One ship would have to be sacrificed.

Alcamenes looked down to the console, feeling a moment of regret, but still triggered two control sequences; one sequence to communicate execution of the secondary plan to the Bellerophon, and the second to close the entrance to the pocket.

Within a fraction of a second, Guardian's powerful control of the entranceway shut down, sealing the entrance to the pocket in an abrupt flash as the usual natural laws of physics returned into balance. The pocket was closed. It would never be opened again.

Assh-Uk reacted physically, perhaps from the severing of its communication with its kind inside the pocket.

"_How long-"_ Assh-Uk began to ask, but blinding weapons fire suddenly lit up the screen as the Bellerophon opened fire upon the last ship.

Assh-Uk let out a psychic cry of anger, the burst physically hurting Alcamenes' head before he clamped down even tighter shields around his mind. In that moment, he finalised the seal on the pocket's lock via the console, knowing that he was also sealing his own fate with it.

He turned from the console and faced Assh-Uk. "_The pocket is sealed forever now_."

"_NO_" Assh-Uk sent, the accompanying anger and fear like horrific nausea to Alcamenes' mind, but he ignored it.

"_Your kind cannot be allowed to run free anymore_," Alcamenes stated clearly and apologetically. "_We regret this, but you are too dangerous. You have killed too many in your war_."

"_War, you start,_" Assh-Uk declared, its tall body vibrating with anger and its large pale hands outstretched, sharp blue claws seeming longer now than ever before.

"_You cannot kill humans along with Wraith as you do,_" Alcamenes stated.

"_Betrayal!_" Assh-Uk sent, the black wrappings hanging from its arms sailing around it, bizarrely creating a flowing outline so akin to the trickster psychic imagines the Wraith use to confuse their prey.

"_It has to be this way_," Alcamenes argued. "_Your people will live out their lives in the pocket; they will live._"

Assh-Uk's eyes moved to the screen, across which the fiery weapons battle continued between Assh-Uk's remaining ship and the Bellerophon. "_Traitorous Lanteans."_

"_I am sure it seems that way to you," _Alcamenes replied. "_We have a duty of care to the humans of this galaxy."_

Assh-Uk's lips parted around sharp teeth and a low hiss emanated from inside its dark mouth. "_Care for food._"

"_They are more than food, they are living beings and must be allowed to flourish_," Alcamenes responded.

"_Lanteans began this, gave us weapons_," Assh-Uk stated, its body shaking with restrained fury.

"_It was a mistake, and we are correcting that. Your people will live in the pocket in peace._"

"_Release them_," Assh-Uk ordered furiously.

Alcamenes shook his head. "_That is not possible._"

"_RELEASE THEM_," Assh-Uk shouted inside Alcamenes' head. Behind Assh-Uk, Alcamenes saw both his technicians flinch in physical pain at the psychic shout.

"_It is not physically possible to do so, Assh-Uk_," Alcamenes explained calmly. In the corner of his eye he saw the ships outside exchanging heavy fire between them. Both would be lost now, but the mission would be complete. That was all that mattered today.

Assh-Uk's large pale sharp clawed hands caught at Alcamenes' shoulders. "_TRAITOR! RELEASE THEM!"_

Alcamenes, with years of experience and control to his name, pressed his hands to the insides of Assh-Uk's wrists, holding back any further attack. Assh-Uk was excessively strong, but then so were Alcamenes' people. Lanteans may appear as humans to Wraith, but they were far from the same.

"_I am sorry, Assh-Uk, but this is the only way. They will live; it is just that you cannot be with them. The seal on the pocket cannot be reopened,_" Alcamenes explained as he resisted Assh-Uk's strength. "_The seal has a decay chemical lock._"

Assh-Uk's pressure relented and the slit eyes moved to the screen. Assh-Uk was a scientist and so understood the point. A decay lock would not be broken.

"_It will not open, I am sorry_," Alcamenes explained.

"_Not hold forever,_" Assh-Uk argued.

"_No, but it will hold for thousands of years. Long enough for it to no longer matter_," Alcamenes explained. "_And even when the decay will eventually allow the lock to be freed, no one will know the entrance is there to find the lock or know how to open it if they did, and there will be nothing left inside the pocket by then._"

Assh-Uk's hands snatched away from Alcamenes' shoulders, panic and fury rippling across the psychic space between them.

"_I am sorry, Assh-Uk, but your people will have to live isolated from the rest of the galaxy._"

Assh-Uk's eyes narrowed. _"No, you will not live. Lanteans need us. Wraith will spread. Kill all_."

Alcamenes felt his own sliver of fear to know that those words may be true, but he controlled it in front of Assh-Uk. "_We have another option, another way to fight back._" He explained, but the truth was that he was not confident that the new approach would work. Technology designed with thoughts and determination to kill Wraith. Robot life to destroy Wraith – how could his people be sure the same horror would not happen again?

Assh-Uk turned away and then back in clear frustration, the rippling fabric twisting around its arms and body.

"_I live, I find a way_," Assh-Uk declared.

"_The hibernating units will not work for your kind,_" Alcamenes pointed out. "_And even if they did, by the time the decay lock was ready to use, none would still live inside the pocket to free._"

Assh-Uk looked back at Alcamenes, eyes narrowed, hatred pouring out of every pore.

Alcamenes saw the brilliant flash of a ship exploding on the screen to his right. He glanced round to see for himself, and true enough the last ship was gone, sending pieces of debris and likely living beings out into the vacuum of space. Assh-Uk's kind could survive longer than most without oxygen, but not for that long. The other side of the screen showed the Bellerophon heading out of the system, on fire and unlikely to last long. They would send out word of the mission, to remind the others of the mission today. To be sure never to return here to this system again.

The mission was a success.

A sad and dark day yes, but a success.

Alcamenes could only hope that the new plan to defeat the Wraith would work as well, making this act worth so many lives.

Movement to his left drew his attention back to Assh-Uk. A stillness had settled over the creature, dark and potent. Alcamenes faced the hatred on behalf of his people.

"_You mistaken. Foolish Lanteans,_" Assh-Uk sent. _"We will live._"

"_Yes, your people will live out their lives in the pocket._"

Something close to a cruel smile broke across Assh-Uk's white face. "_No, Lantean. We grow."_

"_It is possible that your people will breed enough to keep the race going inside the pocket,"_ Alcamenes replied logically, though all the research suggested that Assh-Uk's kind would not be able to breed well inside the pocket, their gene pool would be too small. "_Be pleased that they will live on, will evolve on into their own destiny, away from Wraith or humankind._"

Assh-Uk pulled back a fraction, that strange smile widening into a sneer. "_No Lantean. We closer to Wraith than Lantean know._"

No, Alcamenes thought, his people already knew that. It would be most likely that Assh-Uk's kind would feed on each other inside the pocket. There was a planet inside the pocket, basic with vegetation, enough for them to live upon, but their preferred feeding could only be found on each other. It would be their choice as to how they would survive. Alcamenes believed that nature would win out eventually with them – they would consume each other, and if they bred, only a small colony would survive and unlikely to be anything dangerous as the generations passed.

"_Years matter not,_" Assh-Uk hissed loudly. "_Only need to sleep deep."_

Alcamenes frowned at the sentence, realising the meaning of Assh-Uk's revelation. No, they weren't able to hibernate, and certainly not that long...

Assh-Uk hissed in what sounded horribly like laughter.

Alcamenes looked up the tall pale creature in worrying realisation. If Assh-Uk could hibernate outside the pocket, here in the Guardian then-

The alien leapt, fabric billowing as two pale hands wrapped around Alcamenes' head. Alcamenes reached down to his hip to his weapon.

Nothing mattered now but ensuring Assh-Uk died, for this mission might still succeed, but if the pocket were to be opened in the years of future generations by Assh-Uk, the creatures inside still the same, alive, angry and ready to battle again...

Alcamenes' thoughts were cut short in that brief split second though for he felt teeth bite and his life-force draining.

He tried to fight back, to scream to his colleagues, but already he could feel energy blasting over him from their weapons, stealing away his consciousness, but also his pain. They would have to win the last battle against Assh-Uk in the Guardian.

As he slipped away into the darkness, he heard the technicians shouting, heard an alien roar, and finally only the whispering rushing sound of his ears filling with blood, and then eternal blackness engulfing him.

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On to Chapter 2 -


	2. Surviving on Belkan

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**Day One****  
****Chapter 2 – Surviving on Belkan**

It had only been a few days ago that Halling had been injured in battle with the Wraith, having had two pieces of splintered wood embedded into the back of one shoulder, one ear drum burst, and a mild to moderate concussion. Therefore it had perhaps not been the wisest of decisions to join two Satedans on a drinking party on Belkan.

He had hoped that the presence of Oneakka and Massa would curb too much excessiveness during the drinking party – he should have known better. He blamed the concussion, for surely it was to blame for such foolish thinking on his part.

His head certainly hurt now, but he could no longer blame the concussion alone for that particular problem. He could however blame Ronon for them still sitting around a tavern table – one of the only ones still upright in the cluttered tavern.

Turning his aching head, Halling took in the scattering of sleeping local peoples who had joined in with the two day long drinking binge. A cool Belkan breeze was wafting in through the open tavern door over the sprawled collection of humanity – and a few chickens that were pecking around the snoring and unconscious Belkans.

As was common enough that when Elite decided to relax on an Alliance world that locals gathered around them. They wanted to hear war stories, speak with Elite personally, buy them drinks, and offer food. That was at least how such events started, but on Belkan, a world often frequented by Satedan drinking parties, things inevitably became more boisterous – usually involving drinking games, challenges and competitions over anything from knife throwing to swimming the fastest across a lake. Which of course was always a wise thing to do when excessively inebriated!

Such were the ways of things on Belkan, where even the wisest of warriors ended up half unconscious hugging a bag of grain and covered in chickens by the end of a three day drinking party.

This visit had not been quite that bad, but it had been close. The empty barrels lying by the tavern's bar were testimony to how much had been consumed that night, and the two axes embedded into the cross beam above the bar were evidence that Satedans had been here for sure.

Satedans were famous for their warrior nature and great stamina when drinking, but they also had a somewhat accurate reputation of destroying things when in an intoxicated state, and it seemed that Ronon in particular on this visit had been in the mood to celebrate in extreme style. They had made their way through four, perhaps five villages, and Belkans from further afield had just kept on turning up with more food, drink, and renewed energy to keep the party going. There had been so much feasting, wrestling, stone and weapons throwing, a few fights, and yet more alcohol consumed. It had been fun, a good celebration full of laughter.

But now Halling was more than ready to go home.

His head hurt, his concussion adding that extra depth of pulsing pain to his hang-over. His body ached all over, the back of his shoulder particularly painful, and he felt weary to his bones. He used to be able to last far longer than this in his youth, but now his body was commanding him clearly to go lie down somewhere and stay there for quite some time.

At least the others looked as bad as he felt. Massa was sat across the table from Halling, his forehead resting down on his crossed forearms, possibly asleep. Oneakka was sat on the floor to the left, his back against the tavern's bar, his eyes closed, also possibly sleeping. Tyre was sat to Halling's right, dark circles under his eyes and he was swaying slightly in his chair, surely sporting a headache as bad as Halling's.

The only exception to the mutual suffering was Ronon, who despite the hours, the drink, and the sprained muscles, was still on his feet and laughing. Three overly filled mugs of the Belkan sweet mead slammed down onto the centre of the table, the sound echoing painfully around the inside of Halling's skull. Halling pressed his fingers to his temples as he watched the alcohol sloshing down the sides of the mugs onto the already sticky tabletop.

"Drink up!" Ronon shouted as he sat back down at the table, a bright excitable grin across his tired face. How was he still going?

Massa murmured a sleepy complaint from Ronon's right, but didn't lift his head from his arms.

"Enough, Ronon," Halling protested tiredly.

"Enough?" Ronon asked in disbelief, despite the fact that they had been telling him just that for the last...perhaps nine hours. They had gotten some brief moments of sleep, but Ronon seemed in the mood for the party to continue. "Do I hear an Elite warrior of the Alliance surrendering?"

Halling dropped his eyes to the filled mugs, which neither Tyre nor Massa had reached for either. "This isn't a competition, Ronon," Halling replied weakly, which was perhaps somewhat ironic considering that behind Ronon there were several circles painted on the tavern wall with various knives sticking out of them. Halling couldn't remember who had won.

"It is time to go home," Halling pushed.

"Home? Are the Elite so weak?" Ronon baited with a wide grin. He had dark circles under his own eyes and he looked pale, but the ever-present excited sparkle of life still glittered in the Satedan's eyes.

"How are you not tired?" Halling asked, changing tactics. "Haven't you a newborn son who apparently keeps you and Maru up all the hours of the day and night?"

"He does," Tyre confirmed with an exaggerated nod of his head.

"Do you not want to return to your boy and your woman?" Halling pushed.

"They're away," Tyre added leaning towards Halling with a conspirator's smile.

"Uh, I see," Halling realised with understanding. "You are lonely," he teased Ronon.

"No," Ronon protested as he sat back in his chair, his mug of mead lifted to his lips.

"They're at Maru's parents' home," Tyre added.

Oneakka chuckled from the floor to the left.

"So?" Ronon demanded. Someone to the far right across the tavern groaned painfully.

"Afraid of your empty home, all alone with no one to cuddle?" Oneakka asked and Halling chuckled.

"Shut up, Onee," Ronon ordered.

"He's too afraid to join her," Tyre put in, swaying as he spoke. "Her father is a retired General who doesn't approve of Ronon taking leave to look after baby Rakai."

"I am not afraid of anyone," Ronon protested, shoving Tyre, which almost dislodged the hung-over Satedan from his seat.

"I thought it was demanded that Satedan fathers be fully present during the first year of their child's life?" Halling asked, trying to focus his mind on the conversation and away from the throbbing in his brain.

"Maru's father doesn't believe in tradition, he believes in battle and nothing else," Tyre put in as he weakly pulled a mug of mead towards him across the sticky table.

"He's an honourable man," Ronon put in. "And I'm afraid of no one. Unlike Elite that have no staying power."

Halling sighed as hung his head down in near defeat.

From the floor to the left, Oneakka got up, groaning slightly as he stretched his surely aching body, and then stomped away across the tavern. Halling watched him disappear out of the tavern's door without comment, but looking into the morning light outside made Halling's head hurt, so he looked back to the table. He wasn't sure he could even get up from his chair if he needed to answer the call of nature.

"Come on, Halling," Ronon demanded as he pushed a mug of mead towards him. "Do not let down your strong, undefeatable kin."

Halling's stomach churned just catching the scent of the mead. He usually enjoyed the sweet nectar taste, but after two days of drinking it, his stomach was against having anymore.

"We have duties to attend to on the Sythus," he tried next, though the truth was that the Sythus was simply taking on supplies while Teyla stayed on Athos, Jobrill visited the Training Facility, and Nalla was serving on the Military Council. Seifer was still out in the Outer Lantana battle and Si was left to look after the Sythus. It was one of the brief occasional respites between battles that Halling usually enjoyed.

"What could have happened in two days?" Ronon scoffed as his gaze slid over Halling's shoulder.

Halling glanced round to see that Oneakka had returned, and that he was dripping wet. His shirt off, he was using his jacket to dry off his face and short hair.

"Lake," Oneakka explained simply as he sat back down on the floor against the bar. A dunk in a lake sounded good.

"Did you scare the local ladies doing their washing?" Tyre teased.

Oneakka lifted his shoulders dismissively as he rubbed a hand through his hair.

"Didn't hear any screams," Ronon teased.

"Maybe they invited me in," Oneakka replied as he closed his eyes and rolled his shoulders, tattoos moving with the motion. Though not physically injured in the battle on the Glisi homeworld, Oneakka had endured a mental attack of which few had experienced. Drugged up with a new twisted version of Quantum, the Wraith Queen who had made it had used it to rip into Oneakka's head like it was melting snow. The experience had exhausted Oneakka, but after a full day's sleep, he had returned to full health, yet there seemed to be something bothering him since. Perhaps it was Kari' death playing on his mind as it did Halling's. The Sythus would not feel the same without her there.

Halling looked down to the untouched mug of mead and contemplated drinking some of it.

"Why aren't you more like Massa?" Oneakka asked Ronon as he pulled his shirt back on. "He's the example of a dedicated exhausted father." Halling glanced at Massa who was finally lifting his head from his forearms.

"I'm not exhausted," Massa protested, despite the fact that he looked like he might pass out at any moment. "I'm used to going without any sleep." The words sounded somewhat bitter.

"And the constant crying," Ronon put in.

"And the feeding and washing them," Massa added.

"And the mess they make," Ronon replied. The two had bonded considerably over stories of their sons these last two days.

"And the vomiting," Massa added as he stretched his back.

Ronon smiled as he lifted his mug of mead. "To the growing warriors!"

Halling found himself reaching for his mug of mead, programmed from years of celebrating with Satedans to never let a toast pass by.

"May they keep you awake forever," Tyre added as he lifted his mug.

Ronon shoved him playfully as he took a deep gulp of mead. Halling sipped at his, noting Massa was doing the same. Ronon and Tyre slammed their mugs down forcefully onto the tabletop, adding more mead to the surface. Satedans seemed unable to keep from spilling anything alcoholic.

"One more tavern," Ronon declared.

"No," Halling protested as the others groaned with equal protest.

Across the tavern, a local stumbled up off the floor, dislodging a chicken and leaving it squawking in protest behind him as he ran out of the tavern's doorway, likely to find somewhere to empty his stomach.

Ignoring the incident, Ronon lifted his mead again and shouted, "We must, for the babes, and for the fallen," which had been the repeated frequent toast throughout the last two days.

"You cannot use that anymore today," Halling protested. "We toasted to them all, to everyone's fallen, to all that have ever fallen and all those who will. We are done now, Ronon." To his right, Halling saw Tyre nod faintly, though clearly not wanting to admit it out loud.

"Never!" Ronon laughed.

Massa laughed from where he had set his forehead back down against his thick dark forearms. His arms bare - after having somehow had the sleeves torn off his shirt at some point over the last two days - the scars over his right arm were clear in the morning light. After two surgeries on the wound cut shockingly deeply by Iketani' blade, he had gained considerably more use out of the limb than the healers had predicted, but he would never go into battle again. But he would not be slowed; Massa had already begun his new duties in training the latest new Elite recruits in the Training Facility, apparently turning up to the classes with Aki strapped to him.

"Elite may surrender, but never Satedans," Ronon proclaimed.

Clearly logic wasn't going to work today with Ronon, so Halling tried another tactic. "It has been two nights and a full day, Ronon. We have gone through four villages-"

"Five," Oneakka corrected from the floor by the bar.

"Five villages," Halling continued, "we have got at least seven pieces of furniture we need to replace with tavern owners, three doors-"

"Four doors," Oneakka interrupted again.

"_Four_ doors," Halling corrected with a touch of growing impatience, "and that tavern bar-top that Oneakka broke."

"It was split before we got there," Oneakka protested, though he sounded half asleep.

"We have visited every tavern, field and cooking pit here, we've won every challenge," Halling continued, "and somehow we have acquired a goat," he added gesturing to his right where the animal in question was sat near the table looking up at them. Halling couldn't recall where it had come from, why they had ended up with it, and why it was still here. The creature's amber eyes looked up at Halling with what looked like hopeful patience.

"It's not a goat," Oneakka objected.

Halling turned sharply towards the bar. "Stop correcting everything I say, Oneakka," he ordered, aware that his headache was pushing his tolerance.

Oneakka, his eyes closed and his head back against the bar, just smiled in a very annoying way.

Halling gestured back to the goat, which had taken his attention as an invitation to move closer to the table. "When farm animals start following us around it means that it is time to go home."

Tyre began laughing near hysterically as he scratched a hand down the goat's back. "I like the goat."

"It's not a goat," Oneakka put in again, much to Halling's annoyance.

"It looks like a goat, so it is a goat," Halling argued.

"It's got toes and it's fluffy," Oneakka argued in return.

Halling took a calming breath to hold onto his patience. "It's a fluffy Belkan goat then. The point is," he continued quickly, "is that it is time for us to go, Ronon. You and Tyre can remain here, drink the rest of the day away, but we need to return to the Sythus," Halling stated as he levered himself up out of his chair. Fortunately his legs supported his weight.

Massa apparently agreed wholeheartedly because he all but shot up from his chair. "I need to get back to the Training Facility, Aki will need me."

"I'd have a shower before you go pick him up," Oneakka suggested as he got up from the floor.

"Or maybe I'll just dunk myself in the lake like you did," Massa joked.

Halling turned to Tyre, who was getting slowly up out of his chair. "Make sure he gets home," he suggested pointing towards Ronon.

"Leave it to me," Tyre replied as they clasped forearms and shared a half embrace. "It was good to see you, Halling." They pulled back, but kept their forearms locked. "To remember Kari."

Halling nodded as he squeezed Tyres' forearm before releasing it. "You be careful on the Military Council."

"Not for much longer; I'll be back in battle in no time," Tyre replied with clear relief as he turned towards where Massa was reaching for his forearm. As they said goodbye, Halling turned towards Ronon, who suddenly engulfed him in a massive embrace.

"See you soon, Old Timer," Ronon teased as he attempted to squeeze the breath and life out of Halling.

"You take care of young Rakai," Halling replied once he was able to breathe again. Ronon nodded with a heartfelt looking smile. "Rakai would be so honoured to know you named your first born after him," Halling added.

Ronon's smile slipped slightly. Rakai had been a very close lifelong friend of both Ronon and Tyre, who had regrettably been killed in battle over a year ago.

"Maybe you should call your firstborn daughter Kari?" Ronon suggested with a smile, but they both knew Halling would have no children. Elite rarely did, and besides, Halling was past the days of believing in such things for himself, to think of having the chance to experience fatherhood.

"Maybe I should," Halling simply replied, the subtext going unsaid but understood between warriors.

"Watch your back," Ronon added more seriously as he moved away.

"We will," Halling promised as, unseen by Ronon, Oneakka stepped up behind the Satedan and clipped the younger man around the back of the head before he darted away. Ronon shouted in laughing protest and lunged for the departing Oneakka. Oneakka turned and went for a headlock around Ronon as the Satedan tackled him against the bar.

"Come on," Halling ordered wearily as he took the lead in actually leaving the tavern. The play-fighting had been entertaining two days ago, but now Halling was more than ready to leave Belkan as quickly as possible.

Behind him, he heard more laughter and a local protesting at having been stepped on.

"Next time, Onee," Ronon shouted. "I'll get you next time."

"Keep dreaming your fantasies," Oneakka teased back from behind Halling as they stepped out into the Belkan sunlight.

The light seared against Halling's delicate eyeballs and he struggled not to groan out loud at it. The new light sensitivity added more insult to his painful head and aching body as he strode away from the tavern, looking around as best he could with painful eyes to work out which village they were in.

Fortunately as it turned out, they were in the village closest to the Portal, which perhaps had been their intention last night, Halling couldn't remember. The circular Ancestor tech stood solid and tall in the Belkan morning, various locals moving around it in the open central space of the village. Many of them looked more than a little worse for wear.

"A few grumpy looking women today," Massa muttered from Halling's right. "Guess we kept up some children."

"Or their fathers," Oneakka suggested with a groan as he stretched his long pale arms up and out.

"I feel for them, screaming children keeping them up all night," Massa uttered.

"Are you regretting adopting young Aki?" Halling asked.

"Never," Massa replied immediately. "I look forward to holding him again."

"After washing," Oneakka put in. There was a following grunt, which was likely due to Massa shoving him, but Halling kept his eyes forward, desperate to get through the Portal and back to the Sythus, where he could wash and sleep. Ahhh the blissful promise of sleep.

Reaching the Portal's dialling device first, Halling jabbed in the address sequence for the Training Facility for Massa. "It has been many days since seeing Aki," he said to Massa as the Portal activated. "Perhaps bring him to the Sythus next time we are in dock."

"I plan to, Si sent me a message that he was sorry to miss this outing," Massa replied as the wormhole exploded out through the air and snapped back. "I shall see you both soon. Watch your backs." Halling embraced the big warrior briefly, as did Oneakka, before the man turned away and headed towards the waiting Portal.

"He's looking better," Oneakka noted quietly as they watched Massa step through the shimmering surface of the Portal. Only a few short months ago Massa had looked starved, haunted, and lost after the murder of his love Mera and their unborn child. Tormented by his hunt for revenge against Iketani, Massa had sworn blood vengeance only for the traitor to apparently have been killed by another. That miss had haunted Massa as much as his grief, for he had felt he had failed honouring his lost family. But, Iketani had survived and he had eventually had his moment of blood vengeance. Though that battle had lost him a battling future among the Elite, it had healed something inside the warrior, and had brought him the chance to bring up young Aki, Iketani' abandoned newborn, to raise as his own. In that new purpose, Massa had found something to live for again, and it was clearly healing him in more ways than were visible in the new muscle he had regained and the more easy return of a smile.

"Yes, he is," Halling replied simply, for Oneakka understood all that was unsaid. It was good to see their friend healing, to have such purpose again.

Halling turned back to the dialling device ready to dial out once the wormhole deactivated, but a burst of noise echoed up from the collar of his jacket. He pulled free the radio link housed in the collar.

"Halling," Massa's voice called out.

"Here," Halling replied worriedly.

"Thought you should know, the Sythus has been put into space dock at Station One," Massa reported.

"Why?" Halling asked. No repairs had been scheduled that he had known of two days ago.

"Sounds like you guys are getting your new engine at last," Massa replied with a smile in his voice.

"Yes!" Oneakka muttered from Halling's left. "Finally."

"Thank you, Massa," Halling replied.

"I'll bring Aki by in the next couple of days, so you won't be bored," Massa added with a chuckle. "Training Facility out."

The radio link shut down along with the wormhole.

"About time," Oneakka uttered as he reached past Halling and began dialling in the alternative address that they now had to use. "The Hastos Son has been testing it long enough."

"It is not a competition, Oneakka," Halling pointed out as the new wormhole activated, the rushing burst of noise echoing loudly inside Halling's sensitive skull.

"We should have the best," Oneakka argued as he strode ahead towards the Portal.

Feeling his patience at breaking point, Halling followed towards the wormhole. "And now we will."

He stepped into the familiar strange sensation of wormhole transport and within a split second the quiet farming community of Belkan transformed into the enclosed noisy space of Station One.

Station One was the largest Alliance Military engineering space station, and as such was a busy environment. Able to dock as many as fifteen ships at one time, there was nearly always a massive number of crew moving through the station. Traders had long ago picked up on the opportunity here to sell almost anything to bored waiting military personnel who had to lose sometimes days off ship with nothing to do. This had led to some traders cashing in far further by setting up leisure facilities on the station, which now provided almost any indoor sporting activity, as well as evening entertainment in bars and dance floors. As such, Station One teemed with life most of the time, and was said to be one of the most challenging working environments for Enforcement personnel.

The Portal on Station One was set up in a room just outside the main marketing spaces. As Halling and Oneakka stepped through, the security personnel on duty immediately relaxed, the two guards both nodding respectfully. Halling noticed that, as usually happened with people, they shifted their gaze almost immediately away from the more intimidating looking Oneakka and onto any other Elite present, which today was Halling. Except, today both guard's gazes slid from him down to the floor to his right. Looking down himself, Halling found the hopeful cheerful eyes of the Belkan goat looking back up at him.

"What the-?" Halling exclaimed down at it. It was not hugely uncommon for animals to wander through Portals following trading carts, but this was the first time Halling had personally been followed by an animal. Frowning down at the goat and its quite distinct mottled black and white coat with occasional ginger splodges; it was clearly the same goat from the tavern. It had followed them all the way from the tavern and through the Portal.

"Clearly he likes you," Oneakka chuckled as he moved away out of the Portal room.

Halling frowned at his retreating back.

"Should we send the animal back, Honoured Elite?" One of the security guards asked with a tone that was clearly very carefully controlled. Halling suspected it had been somewhat amusing to the guards at having seen the goat arrive alongside two famous Elite warriors.

"Yes," Halling ordered sternly and strode away, using his long legs to catch up with Oneakka heading into the main lobby of Station One.

Oneakka had found an information console and was calling up which docking station the Sythus was docked.

"She'll be docked at terminal one or two," Halling put in impatiently.

"I know," Oneakka replied instantly. "Just checking."

"If you must," Halling muttered while taking in the busy bustle of the station. Everything looked relaxed and normal. "Why fit the engines now?" He wondered out loud. "We are scheduled to accompany the fifth fleet division out to the mine checks-"

"They'll have sent the Hastos Son instead," Oneakka interrupted as he strode forward, leading the way towards the transport lanes which linked the main station hub to the docking terminals.

"Was that on the information console?" Halling asked, annoyed at himself for bickering, but finding himself unable to stop.

"It's obvious, Seifer wants us to assist in Outer Lantana," Oneakka replied as they walked side by side through the security checks without being stopped. "We've been waiting for the new engine's designer to move to the Sythus as Lead Engineer and fit our new engine, so the Hastos Son will have dropped him off and headed out with the fifth fleet instead of us."

"Maybe," Halling replied, though could see the logic.

"I suppose I'd be grumpy if I'd woken up with a goat," Oneakka muttered quietly but loud enough for Halling to hear and steadfastly ignore.

They reached the transport lanes, which consisted of moving floors through narrow tunnels, the walls plastered with traders' advertisements and the promises of the leisure fun to be enjoyed while staying on Station One. Halling ignored the bright coloured displays and Oneakka, as they continued walking along the moving floor despite it not being necessary. The sooner they could get to the Sythus and Halling could sleep the better.

"It'll take at least three days to fit the new engine," Oneakka began to comment conversationally, or perhaps he was just thinking out loud just to annoy Halling's aching head. "The Sythus has been docked here a day already, which I got from the information console by the way," he added pointedly, "so we've got at least another two days, perhaps a third before the engine can be properly tested."

"Two days to sleep, sounds good to me," Halling muttered as they left one moving floor and joined another, heading towards terminal one and two, but on this moving floor Halling stood still letting it carry him forward.

"They'll need all hands to help with the engine fit," Oneakka continued, sounding almost pleased at the thought, which he probably was since he was something of a tinkerer with technology. Give Oneakka several random pieces of tech and he could make something out of it. "They're talking about fitting some of the new bio-conduits too," he added, sounding almost excited now.

"Great," Halling muttered without feeling as he massaged the ache above his eyes and leant a little more heavily against of the handrail of the moving floor.

"I've seen some of the tech," Oneakka replied, his voice cutting a little too loudly in the narrow space of the empty transport lane. "They're taking some ideas from the Wraith admittedly, but tech that can transport information as fast as neurons and can heal itself is the future for us."

Halling sighed and glared round at him only to see an amused sparkle to Oneakka's blue eyes. He was talking incessantly on purpose, and probably louder than necessary too.

"Why are you so cheerful?" Halling demanded.

"I told you not to drink on a concussion," Oneakka pointed out accurately.

"Like you normally listen to such advice," Halling objected. "You went to the Military celebration last year after you broke your collarbone."

"It was only a partial fracture," Oneakka argued, "and I'm a lot younger than you."

"Barely ten years," Halling objected, but he could feel his mood lifting at the return to one of their common teasing arguments.

"Ten _good_ years," Oneakka put in.

Halling looked round at him again. He had thought earlier that Oneakka had seemed a little different since the battle on the Glisi world, quieter and perhaps a little sad and overly thoughtful. Clearly that mood had passed.

"You have cheered up," Halling commented.

"One of us has to," Oneakka responded, always one to win any verbal discussion with the last word.

The moving floor ended and two more appeared ahead, one to either terminal one or two. Oneakka headed for terminal two, so Halling followed, the two of them stepping together onto the moving floor. Despite his aching head, Halling took the moment to study his friend more closely.

The battle on the Glisi world was several days ago now, but with Kari' loss, it had not left Halling's thoughts since. Yet again he and Oneakka had survived another battle together, though it had been shockingly close by all accounts, as Halling had been frustratingly unconscious through most of it. A part of him wondered if that was also part of the reason why he felt so preoccupied with losing Kari, for he had not been able to help fight, to perhaps have helped save her. And that it had taken the actions of a criminal and those from Atlantis to actually secure victory only made the pill even more uncomfortable to swallow. He wondered if Oneakka had been feeling the same.

"It will be different to leave dock without Kari," he commented into the silence of the empty moving floor around them.

Oneakka nodded, his expression sliding back into its more usual blankness. Halling was not fooled though, he knew his friend far too well.

"Think we'll take on someone new?" Oneakka asked into the silence.

"Perhaps, but with Seifer already with us to cover Nalla's absences to the Military Council and Teyla's involvement with Athos over the non-aggression treaty with Atlantis-"

"Yeah, because _that's_ why she was spending so much time with those from Atlantis," Oneakka commented pointedly.

Halling hadn't realised Oneakka had known about Teyla and Major Sheppard, though it did not surprise him really. Oneakka and Teyla had a close friendship of their own that seemed something akin to a brother and sister who spent little time together, but still loved and respected each other.

"I am sure she is in control of the situation," Halling said neutrally, his argument with Teyla earlier in the week back on Atlantis too fresh in his mind. He had to respect her decisions and trust in her to look out for her heart as much as her physical survival.

"I like Sheppard," Oneakka replied though, surprising Halling.

Though aware that Oneakka had accepted some time ago that Major Sheppard was not an enemy as he had first thought, it appeared that Oneakka had now developed some respect for the Earth man.

"He seems an able warrior," Halling replied, not sure himself how best to describe his own level of respect for the man. It was perhaps his own concerns over Teyla that clouded his thoughts on the matter.

"You're too protective of her," Oneakka responded, surprising Halling again. Ahead the transport lane was fast approaching its end at the wide open hatch that would lead through to the docking terminal, but Halling kept his attention on Oneakka. The man's blue eyes seemed oddly insightful on the current subject – had Teyla told him about their argument?

"I only think she is not necessarily looking out for her own best interests in the future," Halling replied carefully.

Oneakka made a sound close to a scoff as the lane ended and they stepped off the moving floor and moved into the terminal section. "She's a grown warrior who can more than take care of herself."

Halling frowned at Oneakka's back as they moved through a second hatchway into the open space of the terminal, or rather it was normally an open space, today it was packed full with stacked shelves and trolleys with various pieces of tech. Directly ahead the pressurised hatch to the Sythus stood open, which was also almost entirely filled up with tech, apart from a clear walkway left empty through it into the ship. As they moved through the full terminal, Halling noticed that there was a clear distinction between what was stored to the left and to the right. On the left, were clearly old pieces of engine and the other side held protectively wrapped pieces of new tech. Oneakka stopped almost immediately, his eyes eagerly running over the trolleys and tables of twisted pieces of old tech that were likely to be recycled. No doubt this would be Oneakka's playground left with so many random pieces of tech.

Halling stopped behind Oneakka, mostly because his friend filled up most of the open space to walk though, but also because he felt he still had more to say in their conversation.

"Teyla can take care of herself in any battle, but when it comes to matters of the heart..."

Oneakka pulled a face at that comment as he picked up several pieces of tech from a bucket of what looked like broken, cut up pieces of metal. "Teyla is a warrior to her soul; she will always put that above the passing fancy of feelings."

Halling had always wondered if Oneakka had ever deeply loved another in his life – ever been truly deeply in love. Had he loved a woman in his past so much that he knew what it was like to lose one's mind and heart? Had he loved Methren as much as Halling had - the Elite female they had both pursued and wished for their own. Her untimely death had stolen them the chance to discover which of them she had decided to be with, and had almost ended their friendship. Halling's chest still ached to think of her now. To hear Oneakka scoff at the idea of losing one's heart suggested to Halling that he had never loved Methren as Halling had. Or was that his own heartbroken logic? The theory meant little though, for neither of them would ever know which one Methren would have chosen, though Halling still believed that he had been closer to Methren than Oneakka had been. Oneakka's comment now suggested as much. Yet, also to know that Oneakka, a strong powerful man in his mid thirty years, had never felt true deep overwhelming affection for another saddened Halling. As distracting and painful as love could be, it was something that everyone should feel. Even as scarred, angered, and isolated as Oneakka presented himself to be to others.

"I am not so sure Major Sheppard is a simple passing fancy for her," Halling said quietly, though there was no one else currently around to overhear them. He had not voiced his true thoughts like this before, but he always trusted Oneakka to keep such things quiet.

"You thought that about Kanaan," Oneakka replied as he moved ahead to another trolley of tech and picked up a few pieces which disappeared into the pockets of his damp jacket that he held.

"No, I did not," Halling objected. "To Kanaan it was far more, but never for her."

"Whatever," Oneakka replied as he reached over a warped split piece of piping. "She's an Elite, she knows feelings aren't important. What else is there to say?"

Perhaps it was understandable that Oneakka had not fallen in love after all...

Ahead several technicians appeared, rolling a large trolley out of the hatch of the Sythus into the terminal, both nodded, but were clearly more interested in getting the massive trolley and its highly stacked split pipes and buckets of random broken metal aside. They looked like they had been working very hard.

"Are they cutting the ship apart?" Halling asked worriedly as they passed the last of the trolleys and its contents. Oneakka's arm shot out and he snagged one last piece of metal, causing Halling to walk into him.

"Enough, Oneakka," he muttered, pushing his friend forward through the hatch into the pressure hatch to the Sythus. Well, no one pushed Oneakka, but he moved forward at Halling's push.

"The new engine's housing is completely different, they're having to cut down through two levels to install it," Oneakka replied with that same slightly excitable tone while peering closely at the last piece he had grabbed. "Looks like they're replacing the consoles too," he muttered. "This probably used to be part of the-"

"_Enough_," Halling insisted again as they stepped through the last of the pressurised hatches and finally arrived back on the Sythus.

Where Si was stood waiting for them, his wide dark arms crossed in a relaxed stance.

Halling wondered how he knew to be there at that moment, but then Si had his own ways of knowing things.

"You both look rough," Si greeted them.

"It has been a long two days," Halling replied honestly.

Si grinned though. "I am sorry I missed it. Ronon and Tyre are well?"

"Both very well," Halling replied.

"Halling's very hung-over," Oneakka reported as he pushed all his newly acquired tech pieces deeper into the pockets of his jacket which he had secured through his belt.

Si smiled again. "It would not be a proper Satedan drinking party if everyone did not have a headache at the end of it."

Halling had to agree with that.

"The goat is a new addition though," Si added.

"What?" Halling looked down to the empty floor at his side and then behind him, only to see movement down the corridor to the right. The stupid Belkan goat was wandering down the corridor as if sightseeing.

"It's not a goat," Oneakka added unnecessarily.

"Don't start that again, Oneakka," Halling threatened. "It must have gotten away from the Portal guards." And followed them all the way here!

"It's stealthy, I'll give it that," Oneakka commented.

Halling debated running after the goat, which was now poking its head into several stacked crates of tech. Did fluffy Belkan goats eat metal?

"Get out of there," Halling called down the corridor to the creature, but it carried on sniffing everything.

"Technician," Si called to one of the men who had followed them back through the hatchway. "Catch that animal and return it to the Portal guards."

"Yes, Honoured Elite," the man replied, not questioning his orders for a second. He hurried past them towards where the goat began to scurry away.

"There have been some changes since you have been gone," Si continued as if ordering the capture of a goat was normal enough.

"I can see that," Halling noted gesturing to the stacked crates lining the Sythus' corridors.

"Almost every floor this end of the ship is being utilised. We have our new Lead Engineer on board, Ru, he is overseeing the engine's installation." Halling nodded along whilst trying not to watch as the technician chased the goat out of view.

"He as good as they say?" Oneakka asked.

"He seems focused and dedicated," Si reported.

Halling focused on him.

"Madesh has been confirmed new quarters onboard," Si continued.

Halling hadn't been overly surprised that Madesh had been assigned to the Sythus, for Oneakka had been mentoring him for some time and promoting his skills with the other Elite.

"The Military Council are debating Emmagan's new proposals for Elite involvement with Military stations across the Alliance," Si added.

"What's to debate?" Oneakka asked. "We have more than enough warriors who are no longer battle worthy, they want and can contribute..."

"Indeed," Si replied. "However, the risk of angering the High Council has to be discussed."

"It'll go through," Halling replied. He had his own reservations over the Elite becoming a political power, but Teyla's proposals had merit and with the worrying new behaviour of the Hive they had stopped on the Glisi world, it was possible that there were Wraith disguised as humans out there among Alliance stars. It was worrying and required Elite attention.

"Rosenthal has claimed almost sole responsibility in pushing through the non-aggression treaty with Atlantis," Si continued.

"Typical of Nolfi," Halling muttered as a new trolley loaded with tech parts was wheeled past. He wondered why Si felt it necessary to continue this discussion here at the hatchway.

"The Satedan and Rosenthal Political Marriage has already made waves within the High Council," Si added.

Halling glanced at Oneakka. "And Ronon asked what could happen in two days away from here."

"And Seeal has returned," Si added.

Halling saw Oneakka's head snap round as he looked at Si in shock.

"What?" Oneakka asked. "What do you mean 'returned'?"

"She approached Emmagan on Athos yesterday, said she had more information to trade with us," Si replied.

"And Teyla sent her to Division?" Halling prompted.

Si shook his head. "Seeal refused to supply her information to anyone but us.

"So, Teyla brought her back here?" Halling asked with a frown. It was a considerable breach of security to have such a woman on the Sythus again.

"Tyoosi is less than pleased," Si replied. Tyoosi, the Sythus' Lead Guard, head of security and one of the eldest and most experienced of Elite staff still on active duty, was not a man who would tolerate any possible risk to his people and ship.

"I do not doubt it," Halling uttered. "Is she in a cell?"

"She is not a prisoner," Si corrected him. "But, Tyoosi has two guards watching her at all times."

"What information has she given?" Oneakka demanded, all hints at his previous playful mood long gone.

Si looked at him. "Considerable."

That surprised Halling a little.

"She has supplied us with a backup memory drive of Dreamstation's computer database, with records dating back since the station was established," Si replied and Halling heard the surprise in Si' tone that he shared.

"Verified?" Oneakka asked.

Si nodded. "It is legitimate as far as we can tell, though you might have more insight to give by looking at it. The wealth of information it contains will take weeks to go over and far longer to fully analyse."

"What does it hold?" Halling asked.

"The name of every ship docked, scanned, or contacted, and every individual who stepped onto Dreamstation for the last ten years," Si replied. "Including of course," his eyes shifted back to Oneakka, "all of Iketani' visits."

Halling felt his mouth drop open, and quickly shut it. "Truly?" It would be everything that Oneakka and the Elite could hope to discover about Iketani' involvement on Dreamstation.

"Most names are pseudonyms, but Seeal has also supplied us with data pads full of the equivalent names, and some background that she had collected on them all while on Dreamstation. She has also supplied copies of communication frequencies that Kolya and other interesting parties have been using to Creass."

"Has she given us Creass' location?" Oneakka asked. He was stood very still and straight next to Halling, his former relaxation completely evaporated. This was perhaps difficult for him, as it was somewhat for Halling, for the woman had saved both their lives, but they knew she could not be trusted. Perhaps it had been her scheme all along to ingratiate herself with the Elite. Though admittedly, running alone into likely death in fighting a Wraith Queen might be a somewhat extreme way of gaining that.

"She still refuses to release Creass' location," Si replied, "though she appears willing to document almost anything else we ask of her."

"Why?" Halling asked the obvious question.

Si shrugged slightly, the motion causing his new armour to creak across his massive shoulders. "She says she has left Creass' organisation and is currently homeless, that she needs a cleaned record to allow her to move freely through Alliance space."

Halling frowned.

"Emmagan says you will both vouch for her," Si added looking between them with eyebrows lifted.

Halling frowned and glanced at Oneakka. "How can we trust the woman considering her past?"

Oneakka didn't respond to the question though. "What other information is she giving?" He asked Si.

"We've got her working in the Research Lab completing a full map of smuggling and dealing worlds, linking them up with all the names she's given us and any further information to annotate it with. Should keep her busy for quite some number of days," Si replied.

Oneakka abruptly turned and strode away, purpose heavy in his steps, which clearly would be directed towards the Research Lab. He, more than anyone else, had gotten the best read on Seeal. Halling trusted Oneakka to judge her accurately and not be swayed by the fact she had saved their lives.

"So, we're allowing her to stay on the ship?" Halling asked Si.

"While we're in space dock there is no harm," Si replied. "Emmagan said Oneakka and Madesh will know if she is to be trusted on the information she has given and if she's here for more nefarious reasons."

Halling nodded thoughtfully. "Nalla is still away."

"She will return in a few days, ready for our first test of the new engine."

Halling nodded. Nalla would be able to judge Seeal properly and thoroughly. Until then of course, it was simply a case of getting out of Seeal all they could and keep a very, very close eye on her.

"There is another matter of which you should know," Si added.

"More?" Halling asked, feeling even more tired now than he had sat in that tavern on Belkan.

"About Teyla," Si added, using her first name and causing Halling to give him his full undivided attention. "Has she shared with you her latest plan?"

"About the Elite station on Aria?" Halling guessed.

"No," Si replied quieter, glancing one way and then the other. No other technicians were in sight and Oneakka was long gone. "She has put herself forward within the Alliance for Political Marriage for Athos and the Elite."

To say that Halling was shocked was a mild description; he would never in his craziest of dreams have thought Teyla would do such a thing. He could not believe it.

"She has always protested against the practice," he argued.

Si nodded. "She now feels that she serves Athos and the Elite in forming new alliances, bonds, and security with such a contract."

Halling shook his head in continuing disbelief. "Truly?" He asked Si, and the other man nodded. "Why?"

"I suspect," Si said softly, "that Kari' death has affected her more deeply than we realised and she will admit."

"We have all lost many over the years, I do not understand why now," Halling whispered.

Si angled his head slightly. "She is right that such a contract will forge ties within the Alliance."

Halling frowned. "By selling herself off to someone, most likely some older government ex-military figure on some random power hungry Alliance world?"

"It is her choice, and it will not affect her life overly much," Si argued, seemingly agreeing with the idea.

"Not affect her life much?" Halling asked in disbelief. "Even if they adjust the contract for an Elite, she will have to spend some of her life away from the Elite, and with her husband on Athos because he will not be allowed on this ship."

"The contract can limit the number of days considerably of such exchanges," Si replied. "It will be an honorary contract only, affecting neither all that much, but likely creating strong contractual links."

"You agree with this?"

"It is her choice and her right to decide," Si replied, patiently and calmly, neither of which Halling was currently feeling, especially on top of feeling so tired, hungry and achy.

"Where is she?" Halling asked. "Is she in Tjaru?"

"No, she has returned here. I believe she is currently walking Ketra in the Hydroponics Bay."

Halling nodded and turned away, striding away from Si in the opposite direction from Oneakka's departure.

This was foolish of Teyla! Halling had no doubt that Major Sheppard had something to do with this. Had he broken her heart, which had caused her to her respond like this?

Halling had known her spending time with the man from another galaxy had been a mistake, and now she was sacrificing her freedom for a foolish weak contract.

What was she thinking?

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TBC


	3. Sweet Scent of Memories

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**Day One  
****Chapter 3 – Sweet Scent of Memories**

The trees of the Hydroponics Bay stood tall behind Teyla, their wide lush healthy branches reaching up towards the ceiling of artificially created light. Everything in here was tightly maintained and controlled, all designed to produce the very best environments for the trees, grasses, vegetables, cereals and flowers that grew in the massive bay. In here almost all the basic needs of the ship's crew was produced, from oxygen, foodstuffs, medicinal herbs, tea leaves, and purified air. From the artificial construct of the bay and its programmed daily cycles, the vegetation flourished, producing the tallest trees, the thickest of shrubs, and the brightest of flowers. In the vacuum of space, away from anything resembling a nurturing environment, the bay's forest and fields bloomed.

Before Teyla, the small field of Sweet Grain danced lightly in the soft breeze that ran across the bay today. The scheduled rainfall earlier had left the air slightly heavy with humidity, and the taste of the moisture on her tongue carried the familiar sweet taste of the grain. Years planting and harvesting Sweet Grain on Athos as a child made watching the grain grow in the bay a nostalgic experience. The sweet rough scent from the grain made her think of harvest cakes and brewed celebration beer that Athosian children were allowed to taste each year, severely watered down of course. Tjaru still smelt of baking Sweet Grain bread most days, but it was rare that Teyla ever visited the Athosian grain fields anymore, so to have this little piece of her home planet, of her childhood, on the Sythus meant a lot to her. She often came to this section of the bay to think or when she missed her homeworld. The scent of the grain, in almost all of its accelerated stages of growth, was always enough to evoke comforting memories and remind her constantly of what she fought for each day - to protect her people and all other peoples from the Wraith.

Walking along the edge of the grain field this morning, she had run her hand along the bright pointed swaying tips of the grain, enjoying the familiar tickling sensation of it against her palm, and had inhaled the scent rising from her brushing passing. It was the smell of home and full of memories of running through the tall grains when she had been so small as to not be able to see Father and Mother beyond the rows. She had run full pelt through the swaying avenues between the grains, Zabetha following her, nervously asking if they were too far from their parents, but Teyla had not cared. She had always felt safe in the fields, had enjoyed the thrill of the enclosed exciting seemingly endless fields of Sweet Grain.

Yet, thinking such thoughts now, as a grown woman, inevitably put a somewhat sadder turn upon such memories. Mother was gone, the grains were food not exciting hiding places, and she was a warrior, trained in the art of killing monsters. The naive freedom of childhood felt so very far away, sadly so.

Such reflections had continued to play on her mind as she had sat upon the carved wooden bench overlooking the Sweet Grain and its neighbouring strip of bright red and blue Litan tulipin flowers. The sweet nectar of the tulipins attracted the carefully cultivated butterflies that inhabited the bay. One of only three insect species bred in the bay, they pollinated the wide variety of flowers and some plants, and also provided endless entertainment for Ketra who spent half her time in the bay chasing them. Long ago Teyla had decided that Ketra's pursuit of the butterflies was sport for the dragon, not a true hunting instinct. Watching Ketra now where she was poised, backside hunched down ready to spring forward, Teyla had to smile. A large purple butterfly was flittering around the end of the tulipins, close enough to Ketra to be a target. It had taken some time, and quite a lot of shouted orders, but Ketra no longer trampled the edible tulipins during her butterfly play. Instead she stalked around the edges of the tulipin beds, nipping, jumping, and chasing the butterflies as they swooped to and from the flowers.

The purple butterfly finished its drink from the tulipins and lifted up into the artificial breeze, and Ketra pounced up and forward, narrowly missing the end flowers. The butterfly escaped up and away with easy speed, while Ketra jumped and bounded behind, appearing, despite her increased muscle mass, as if she was once again tiny and young. Powerful jaws that could push her fangs through a Wraith's throat now hung open with apparent joy as Ketra bounded away out of sight, following her current target butterfly.

At least Ketra could enjoy the joy and peace of a moment of quiet without heavy weight upon her thoughts. Teyla wished she could do that, that she could find a way to put aside her near-constantly turning mind. She had always celebrated responsibility and a purposeful life, but as she grew older, it seemed that life became more complicated and murky. The simplicity of childhood was long gone.

The difficult complexities of life could not be so easily forgotten in play.

Especially now, for she would have no more moments of escapist freedom in John's arms. The promise of such things would only risk distracting her from her duty again. Yet, the thought of him, of the ache in her heart – it made her think about once more running into those towering rows of Sweet Grain, playing freely and forgetting all risk.

But she was an adult now, and her time with John was over.

It had been too good, too bright and easy.

And she missed it desperately; she desperately missed him.

Though she did not regret her decision to put herself forward for a Political Marriage, as an effort to help forge long-term strong bonds between Athos and the Elite within the Alliance, it would still be the coffin nail upon her surrender of John. And that hurt.

It hurt like a sharp blade into her heart, twisting and pulling so that she could feel a literal tearing sensation in her chest. She had little interest in eating. She had lain awake countless number of hours in the nights wishing away thoughts of John, yet also spending that time thinking constantly of him.

She had known it would be difficult to move on from him, but she had not realised how all consuming it would become. How she thought of him constantly; when she woke she thought of him, when she had her first meal she recalled Atlantis' Mess Hall and she wondered what he might be eating for his first meals. When she had been in Tjaru, just walking down a corridor had produced so many memories of walking the hallways of the Governing Complex with him, and how so often their walks led them to her quarters away from everyone else. Sleeping just one night in her quarters in Tjaru had been too difficult and so she had returned to the Sythus earlier than she had planned. Her bed, in which she had John had shared so many hours together, making love and in long conversation as they stroked each other's skin, had been too much. She had been convinced that she could still smell his scent on her Tjaru pillows, despite those coverings having been washed twice since he had last lain beside her. She had had to leave her bedroom to lie on a sofa in her living space instead, only for the flourishing Earth blossom plant in the corner of the room, John's gift to her and Ketra, to taunt her instead. There were still too many memories that were too fresh and meaningful for her.

Returning to the Sythus had not helped all that much though, for it was here that she and John had first begun their friendship that had led to their affair, and even though he had never slept in her bed here, she still foolishly associated it with him, for so many nights away from him had had her thinking of him there.

He seemed to imbue almost everything in her life. Even if he had never been to a place, just the smallest of associations of words or thoughts brought him nearly constantly to mind.

He was like a drug, and she found herself counting how long it had been since she had last seen him. How long it had been since he had last touched her, when they had last kissed...

She had not known that would be her last kiss.

With growing familiarity in the task, she snapped her thoughts away from the rest of that trail of thought. Discipline had always come easily to her, so in time she knew she would be able to train her mind to stop thinking of him so obsessively. Time _would_ heal this. Soon enough the Sythus would leave on its next mission and her focus would be filled with Wraith and battle, and with time, she would think of him a little less each day, until eventually, she might not think of him at all. Perhaps then days and even years would slip away without a thought of him.

Which was suddenly a far more depressive thought than any pain at his absence.

A life without John. She had known their affair would not last, that they could not continue such a thing for long, but she had not realised how not having him around anymore would hurt her. She should not have allowed herself to have become so enamoured with him, to have spent so much time with him on Athos. It had been a mistake, and one that would damage their friendship for sure now, for she was almost certain that she would not be able to remain his friend anymore, certainly not a close one.

Their friendship had brought their people together, but now, she had to sacrifice it.

There was no way she would be able to visit him on Atlantis, to be alone just the two of them and not hurt inside as she did now. There was no way she could look deeply into his eyes again and not want.

She had been better alone, better without such a thing in her life.

He had become a distraction in ways she had not realised until now.

A warrior had to be focused, had to dedicate their lives to their purpose without distraction.

She had preached as much to new Elite recruits, had heard it said a hundred times, but only now did she _truly_ understand how important it was. She had been foolish and now she was reaping the consequences of that mistake.

"Teyla?" Halling's voice shocked her not just in its sudden arrival, but in how close it was.

Snapping her head round, she saw that Halling was barely a few metres away from her; she had not heard his approach. Even such basic warrior skills of survival had been tainted by her distraction!

"Halling," she greeted him abruptly as she worked to control her reaction.

"I did not mean to startle you," he apologised, which only served to embarrass her.

"I was lost in thought," she excused away her reaction quickly as he neared her seat. "I was thinking of childhood days on Athos," she added quickly, gesturing to the Sweet Grain before them.

"Ah," Halling replied with understanding, being Athosian himself. He looked tired, drawn in the face and he frowned as he looked at her. The frown did not lessen as Ketra bounded out of the Sweet Grain to his side. Again Teyla had not heard Ketra's approach; she was far too distracted that it truly worried her.

"How was Belkan?" She asked quickly, forcing a more composed smile into place as she watched Halling stroke a hand over Ketra's silver head.

"How is any Satedan drinking party," Halling responded, still frowning. Something was on his mind clearly, and Teyla feared she knew what it might be. She had not told him yet of her decision for a Political Marriage, and she suspected someone, most likely Si, had informed him upon his return to the Sythus.

"How is Ronon?" She asked quickly, foolishly hoping to delay the conversation as long as possible. Which was not the behaviour of an honest and honourable warrior.

"He is well," Halling replied. "He asked me to send his good wishes and an invitation to visit him, Maru, and Rakai at your convenience."

Teyla's smile slid wider and more honest. "I am glad they are doing well."

Halling nodded, but in a distracted manner. "Teyla, I have spoken with Si." She had been correct.

"He has updated you on all that has been happening since you and Oneakka departed two days ago."

"Yes," Halling replied. "He told me of your plan for a Political Marriage."

She straightened her back and nodded. "Yes." She was ready for his arguments. She had gone through them herself many times, had repeated them with Father, and then further still with Si. She was ready for Halling's response.

"I do not understand," he said. "You have been against such practices for as long as I have known you, which is since we were both young children."

"I have come to see the benefit in the practice," she replied. "It is a way of increasing and strengthening links between our people, both Athosian and Elite, with others in the Alliance."

"The Elite do not need such things, Teyla."

"It is for the greater good of the Alliance," she replied quickly. "That is what we strive for ultimately, is it not?"

"We strive for the end of the Wraith, how is a marriage to help us with that?" He asked almost hotly.

"Contracts and alliances are what the _Alliance_ is about, Halling, you must see that surely."

"We are Elite," he insisted again. "Not political devices."

"I know that," she assured him. "But, we have a part to play in the Alliance, not just in its defence."

Halling sighed loudly as he shifted his stance. Ketra, who had remained at his side, glanced up at him.

"Is this about Major Sheppard?" He asked.

Surprised at the abrupt and direct question, Teyla sat up taller in her seat. She had thought the subject of John had been lain to rest between them following their heated argument on Atlantis. She had insisted in that argument that John had not been a danger to her, but how wrong she had been. That her failure to accompany Halling, Kari and Oneakka to the Glisi homeworld had almost resulted in Halling's own end only placed that previous argument in a darker more uncomfortable focus. However, her decision on a Political Marriage was not founded on her feelings for John.

"This is about what I can do for the Alliance," she corrected Halling calmly, "to help keep bonds strong. The Alliance is weakening, Halling; you saw that for yourself in Atlantis' negotiation hall. Our leaders are corrupt and distracted-"

"So you would control them, or join their game?" Halling asked.

"I am not looking for a High Councillor as a husband," she objected realising his point.

"You said it was a political decision," he argued.

She sighed heavily, looking away. Ketra had moved away from Halling's side to sit beside Teyla, and a slightly anxious expression sat across the dragon's face as she looked between Halling and Teyla. Teyla reached out and stroked a reassuring hand against Ketra's closest shoulder.

"I have to do something for our people, Halling. For Athos, for the Elite, I can offer this," she explained, the words practiced so frequently in the last few day's conversations, as well as in her how thoughts.

"It means nothing," Halling argued though.

"You know that is not true," she pointed out logically, suspecting that his hung-over state was not making him as rational as normal. "As out-dated as the practice may be, it is still a viable means of contract and alliance. I have a lot to offer in that regard, both as an Elite and as eldest daughter of Torren. Almost all powerful families on other worlds have political marriages, and it is only because I am Elite that I have not before now."

"Torren would never have forced you into such a thing."

"No, but as Zabetha did, I would have, had I lived with them on Athos. I would have offered my marriage for the good of the Alliance as a whole." She wondered if that was indeed true as she looked up at Halling, who continued to frown down at her darkly. "It is only a contact, Halling. It will not change anything all that much."

He shook his head though. "That is not true, Teyla. Do not lie to me or yourself on that. A marriage, of any sort, changes things. You will need to spend time away on his planet, involve yourself in political agreements and functions, and he will spend time with you."

"Father and I are ensuring that the contract precisely states the level of involvement and time in each other's worlds," she replied over the soft rustle of the Sweet Grain. "It is likely that my final offers will come from military or military-minded figures, which will help matters. I am not foolish, Halling, I have thought this through," she pointed out, putting some gentle warning into her tone.

"I do not think that you have," he argued sternly.

"Yes, I have," she interrupted quickly. "This is _my_ decision, Halling."

"Is this because of Kari?" He asked next. "Do not make this decision in the throes of grief."

Teyla rose up from her seat, insulted that he would believe she would react as such from emotion. "Halling, I have lost just as many as you through the years. I am not swayed so by losing those around us."

"Then why do this now?"

"Because the Alliance is in trouble. Our future, all our futures, will be put at risk if the Alliance does not hold strong."

"It is not your part to fix the Alliance!"

"Everyone plays a role," she objected. "That is what we, as Elite, believe. That each warrior has value, has much to give to offer to support and honour the whole. Well I have this to give. It has value and I can forge ties for our people."

"You say this now, but you know how these offerings go. The powerful and interested will talk about being your husband, will argue between them, make deals to exclude others, and profit from the one that will step forward alone. He will be some powerful general or world leader's son who has out bid the others. You will not have a selection of ripe young men to choose from Teyla, you will have a gruff military want-to-be who wishes to be your husband so that he has all the prestige he can on his homeworld-"

"Halling," she interrupted angrily, lifting her hands, palms towards him as Ketra shifted worriedly at her side. "I know the procedure of the offerings for Political Marriage, and _I_ will make the decision on who I wish to select as my husband. Why are you behaving this way?"

"Because it is a _foolish_ choice," he all but shouted angrily. She had rarely seen him this way before.

"To you it may seem that way," she argued, raising her own voice, "but this is my decision and you must respect it."

"I will not, it is foolish. You are not thinking clearly."

"Do not insult me, Halling," she stated forcefully.

"You will regret this and I will not see you do this to yourself."

"Why?" She asked angrily.

"Because you are like a sister to me," he shouted, cutting through her anger in an instant. "I love you as family," he added, looking away sharply. "I will not see you sell yourself for an empty contract."

Silence fell between them, the shifting Athosian Sweet Grain all that filled her ears. Her heart lifted though.

She stepped forward through the two paces between them to reach him. He was looking aside still, his emotions uncomfortably close to the surface. Elite were not always all that good at expressing their honest emotions for one another. There were few bonds in life as strong as that between Elite. They had lived in the lifestyle of the Elite since childhood, growing bonds of service and duty that were compounded a thousand fold by sharing battle alongside each other. In each other, Elite trusted their lives, their backs, and their futures. They sacrificed those futures for others, but especially for their fellow warriors.

They were each other's family, and it was a family bound by facing the worst of life together. It was a bond forged in fire, blood, and the deepest of trust. Teyla suspected that many blood families never felt such close kinship as Elite felt with each other.

Yet, as powerful as that was, it was also shadowed by the constant knowledge that those bonds would be severed harshly and prematurely. Elite were strong, not just in body and mind, but also in grief. No one wanted to lose their family, blood or otherwise. And the Elite were family to Teyla.

She touched one hand to the sleeve of Halling's coat, feeling the strong ropey muscles beneath. She looked up through the massive difference of height between them and smiled at him. "You _are_ a brother to me, Halling," she told him.

He finally pulled his eyes from the Sweet Grain to look down at her. His face was tired and especially showed the years between them today, yet it was a face she loved dearly.

"You mean much to me, Halling, but you must understand that I am not selling myself through this marriage. It is not selling, it is an _offering_, a link that I will control and that will announce to the Alliance, to the High Council, that Athos and the Elite are part of the whole. It may even bring new resources for the Elite, we do not know yet, and new trade for Athos. Where one contract begins more will follow," she quoted the Athosian phrase, "others will join the agreements and more bonds will form. It has always been that way in the Alliance, and I wish that when the day comes that I am struck down, that I will be able to leave this to last beyond my death."

Halling frowned, but she saw in his expression that he was now beginning to understand.

"A Political Marriage will alter the bonds between entire peoples, and last long after my departure, perhaps even for generations to come. Such a simple thing can tie worlds and systems together, and perhaps help keep the Alliance strong in some small but still vital way."

She looked up at him, needing him to understand, needing him to agree in this moment.

He took a breath and glanced away. His weary face seemed to grow even more so; the fight had gone out of him.

"I still wish you would be able to achieve that ideal without changing your life in such a way," he said finally.

She nodded, agreeing with him, but also pleased that she had convinced him. Yet, she also felt a stirring of sadness too.

Each time she had this conversation with those important to her, as she convinced each in turn of her motives, it only made it all the more real. However, that was not something she wished to dwell upon right now.

"I will make sure to choose a husband who will bring honour to his people's ties with the Elite," she promised him. "And who will stay alive long enough onboard the Sythus to be useful."

A small smile briefly caught Halling's lips. "I apologise for my outburst," he said. "I believe the drinking party has worn me out somewhat."

She grinned up at him as she released his arm and reached up to his high shoulders. "I understand," she smiled.

His larger strong hands touched down on her shoulders and they touched their foreheads together.

"Thank you for your concern, Brother," she said softly as they parted.

A more usual Halling smile crossed his tired face. "I believe it is time that I retired to my bed."

She grinned. "I suspect that will be a good idea," she suggested. She did not point out that he should not have gone on such a drinking event with a concussion, for surely his aching head was evidence enough of that fact. "I will see you later, or perhaps tomorrow," she amended as he turned away, his shoulders lower than normal.

He turned back to her. "I will see you at the late meal," he disagreed, "where we will need to discuss Seeal."

"Very well," she replied, but she had little doubt that once Halling's head hit his pillow that he would sleep for many long hours. She would not see him until tomorrow, but she knew his pride would not admit to such a thing. "We will discuss it all later," she lied to him.

He nodded, his head looking heavy upon his shoulders, as he moved away. "Good."

She controlled her smile as she watched him walk away along the pathway through the trees. His steps looked like they were an effort for his sleep deprived and hung-over body.

And then he was gone, disappeared along the path through the trees that would lead him to the closest exit from the bay.

Her brother from another mother and father, her brother from Athos, and her brother in battle. She did indeed love him dearly, and it warmed her heart that he cared for her in return. In the future, with a new husband and the loss of John from her life, she would still always have her Elite family. For however long life would let her enjoy them.

She turned away from the trees back towards the gently swaying tops of the Sweet Grain.

Ketra was stood close to their roots, her attention fixed away down the rows between the tall grains. Ketra's body language was no longer that of butterfly play; her head was lowered, her neck spines slightly lifted, and her body was poised as if ready for battle. Alerted by the unusual behaviour, Teyla looked out down the grain lines in the direction Ketra was fixated.

A few areas of the grains seemed to be swaying more than the others.

Teyla took a few steps closer to Ketra, who let out a faint hiss towards the grain. Teyla frowned down the avenue of sweet scented memories of Athos, to see something move across the space between the grain stalks.

It had been an animal, with horns, from the brief glance Teyla had seen.

The Hydroponics Bay keepers had not mentioned anything about introducing any grazing animals like goats into the bay. Perhaps something had changed while she had been on Athos; she would mention it to the keeper on duty when she left with Ketra.

Ketra hissed again as she angled her head down the next row of Sweet Grain, clearly unhappy at the new addition to her butterfly chasing playground.

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TBC


	4. Scheme or Catalyst

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**Day One****  
Chapter 4 – Scheme or Catalyst **

Seeal.

What was she doing back here?

The Research Lab's doorway stood open, allowing a clear view of the room inside. Usually a busy space throughout the day, today the room was empty except for two occupants. On the far side of the room a guard, one of Tyoosi' best, stood watching his charge closely but calmly, while a second guard stood just outside in the corridor in case she was needed. Tyoosi wasn't taking any chances.

Oneakka stepped up into the doorway and held still, taking in the scene before him.

Seeal was sat at the closest research table, leant over the computer interface set in the surface. The chairs could be placed anywhere around the table and the screen altered for a view from any angle, but she was sat at the closest edge with her back to the door.

No warrior sat in such a position, and if they had to, they would angle their chair so as to allow some view of the doorway behind them. Seeal hadn't. A woman who had spent her life on edge not only on the streets as a child, then as a pit fighter, and finally as security lead on Dreamstation would never sit with her back to anyone, let alone to an open door.

It was a very clear statement – she was putting herself in a disadvantageous position, giving herself over to their control.

He wasn't fooled for a moment to think that it was so simple.

A quick glance around the room confirmed at least three reflective surfaces available to her from the angle at which she sat, so she did in fact have a clear view of the doorway behind her. Even with her head directed down towards the tabletop, she could move only her eyes to the reflective surfaces and watch over the doorway behind her.

Still it couldn't be comfortable for her – no warrior would find such a position tolerable for very long.

So he remained in the doorway, knowing she was aware he was stood there despite his silent approach to the Lab. He wanted to see how long it would take her to have to acknowledge a presence watching her – how long until those instinctive hairs on the back of her neck would itch so loud that she would have to look round.

He hadn't expected to see her again. He had predicted she would disappear into the ether of the galaxy, never to be seen again – except perhaps on some criminal notice if she hadn't cleaned up her act.

He had put her into a group of select people in his mind who he would sometimes wonder what their life had become. He was good with faces, and certain ones tended to stick. There were a variety in that group, from military personnel who had stood at his side fighting for twelve hours straight, a Litan mother who he had helped search the ruins of her town for the remains of her family, digging with her bare hands. There had been the elderly warrior on an unnamed non-Alliance world who had approached him for assistance, two young children Oneakka had plucked from the arms of their fed-upon parents during a culling, and the young boisterous kid who had tried to challenge Oneakka to a competition on Scherla. Certain characters whom he had met in some dramatic moment in their lives and who he occasionally pondered over. How was their life? Were they still alive? Had the trauma they had experienced twisted them or made them stronger?

He had placed Seeal in that group to occasionally think about; a woman who had had the most difficult of childhoods, who had been a pit fighter, to end up running Dreamstation's security, yet who had turned back to face a Wraith Queen by herself to try to save him, Halling and Kari. He had argued for her freedom following that brave act, and had repaid her for his and Halling's lives with her freedom from imprisonment. And he had hoped that his final warning to her, to sort her life out, might stick and that she might become a woman of honour.

He had not expected to see her again after that, yet here she was, barely days after her release from this very ship's brig, sitting with her back to an open doorway.

She was clearly up to something, and he would find out what it was. He had repaid her for rescuing him and Halling, but he would not stand for any harm coming to his people and his ship. He would look her straight in the eye and find out why she was here. And if she was here for nefarious means, he would throw her off the ship himself.

For now though, she was still ignoring his presence.

He crossed his arms, allowing a creak of his leather jacket in his hand and the grazing of skin to drift to her ears. He could stay here all day.

She was dressed differently than the last time he had seen her. She wore a dark green top of varying shades creating the appearance of waves of green flowing across her shoulders and down her long arms. Her long black hair was secured up against the back of her head in five sections, each secured separately with a small clip. That was a smart way to secure up so much hair and was probably the pit fighter in her, for if someone pulled at her hair, it would only dislodge one or two clips, preventing the rest of from tumbling down over her face and promising her ability to defend herself. With her hair up, the back of her neck was exposed, which was long and lean, and probably itching with annoyance at him watching her. He was impressed with how long she was putting up with it, but then he supposed it was actually her stubborn personality that was preventing her from acknowledging him.

He narrowed his eyes at her. He couldn't see her face from this angle, with her attention focused down on the tabletop screen, but he just bet she had that stubborn pursed lip look he remembered from only a few days ago.

Her shoulders shifted faintly and she angled her head just slightly, bringing her chin slightly into view. It wasn't looking over her shoulder at him, but from her it was the same. He had won that round. Good.

He waited another beat and then properly entered the room. He strode across the room, brushing close behind her chair, which would again annoy every warrior cell in her body. He grasped the back of a chair stood at the next table over from her and positioned it alongside her table, facing her. He adjusted the chair, without once looking at her, and sat down in it. He laid his right arm along the tabletop, partly obscuring her display screen, set his boots solidly on the floor, and finally looked at her.

She hadn't been able to ignore him this time, and so her eyes were on him as he looked at her. And he really looked at her, studying her closely, looking for all the tiny hints and clues as to her true motives. She was good at reading people, but so was he, and he had seen the truth of her already. He had seen her at her worst and at her best.

Intelligent brown eyes met his, studying him just as closely. Her posture appeared relaxed, but he saw the tension across her shoulders and in her forearms crossed on the tabletop in front of her. Her chin was held high, as it always was, and her eyebrows were slightly raised with that mocking sarcastic way of hers. Her lips were pursed, as he had predicted, and with a slight lift to them to project the appearance of her indifference and amusement at his attempted manipulation of her with his silence. The silence was working though; he could see that it was, and that he knew that she knew too. She was a mouthy one, always looking to do battle with words as well as actions, so keeping silent all this time had to be annoying her.

Her eyes narrowed at him and her sarcastic part smile shifted into a pointed annoyed look that actually still seemed amused. Her eyebrows lifted higher and she glanced away from him and then back. It had been a tiny movement of her eyes – but born from discomfort or from manipulation? She wanted him to think she was uncomfortable or was she uncomfortable?

He gave her a low level glare as a warning.

She rolled her eyes and glanced down at the screen in front of her.

He was almost certain now that she really was uncomfortable, but was working hard not to show it. She didn't seem as confident as the last time she had been here, which was ironic considering the fact that she had been a prisoner the last time. Or was this an act, carefully sculpted to make herself appear weaker than normal?

"When I told you to fly free," he said, finally breaking the silence, "I meant fly _away_."

Her eyes lifted back to him and the amusement returned with full force across her expression. "When the hospitality is just _so_ good here?"

He ignored the sarcasm.

"Here to review Elite ships and security for Creass?" He challenged bluntly, watching her intensely, but not appearing to.

She took a deep breath as she looked away, which was often a technique women used to disarm a man as it drew attention to their breasts, but he hadn't seen any indication at all that she used her body in that way. He read the breath as more of a preparation, a way of drawing attention to her following words not her femininity.

"I have removed myself from Creass' employment," she announced, looking back at him directly. It was a pointed look that said 'read this expression', so he therefore disregarded anything he saw.

"And we're supposed to believe that?" He challenged immediately.

"You can believe whatever you want," she replied instantly, her chin lifting higher with that defiance that seemed to run through her veins along with her blood.

Yet, it seemed to him that under that defiance and outward confidence, there really was something different about her this time. He watched her carefully, trying to work out what it felt like. She shifted slightly, her eyes glancing away again, only to quickly snap back to him as if she had caught herself showing weakness. Her chin lifted again to cover the action.

Or was it an act?

He frowned at her, taking in all the details of her, comparing it to how she had been before. She had been confident, difficult, annoyed, sarcastic, and full of words. Today she appeared more...cautious. And it felt almost as if there was a nervous edge to that caution, but was that because she was trying to infiltrate the ship or because she was now out on her own in the galaxy without an employer or role to fill?

"Why are you here?" He asked her directly.

That faint smile returned to her lips – she was back in her comfort zone. "I have information you want and I need a place to stay."

"So you decided the best place was an Elite ship?" He asked sarcastically.

"I need someone with power in the Alliance, and there is no way I'm going _anywhere_ near Robiah _ever_ again," she stated with real feeling. It gave him a good baseline of reading her to see that honest hatred for Robiah again. Remembering how she had thrown at bowl of rice-meal at the Division man almost made Oneakka smile.

"Why?" He asked instead.

"Because he's a low-life lying son of a Wraith eating whor-" she replied, purposefully misinterpreting his question.

"Why do you need someone with Alliance power?" He interrupted, keeping his expression serious, though the description of Robiah was amusing.

"So I can move around in Alliance territory freely," she replied, seemingly honestly. It made sense, for if she had removed herself from Creass then she would be after the clean slate that her brother had bargained for from Robiah.

"So you can _sell_ your skills in the Alliance away from Creass' reach?" He summarised.

She frowned openly, telling him she had understood his insults that she was both running away from Creass but also just out to sell her criminal skills in the Alliance now instead of out of it.

"No," she replied pointedly, "because I'm not stupid. I know what it's like to live under the threat of the Wraith, so I would prefer to live in the Alliance and have my backside protected by the Alliance Military."

He wondered if she had thrown in the reference to her backside to throw him off – it would take far more than that to distract him from his focus.

"And benefit from Alliance healthcare, job opportunities, and no doubt put to good use the many insider pieces of information you've acquired over the years," he suggested.

"You're implying I plan to blackmail people in power to provide for my future?" She asked.

He nodded. "You're doing that right now, and you did it before with information on The Traitor."

"Most people would call that _trade_, not blackmail," she replied.

"Same thing," he shrugged.

She rolled her eyes dramatically. "I certainly hope the Elite don't ever put you in charge of trading for anything."

"I traded your life out of a Rosenthal prison," he retaliated.

"And I _traded_ your backside out of the hands of a Wraith Queen," she responded quickly.

He almost smiled.

Silence fell again as they stared each other down.

"Why are you here?" He asked again. She might be after her clean slate, but she hadn't answered the question he was really after and he wasn't leaving this table until he heard it.

"I have information you want," she replied slowly as if he were the slow one and hadn't understood what she had just told him. "And I want to be able to move through Alliance space freely." He was used to people thinking he was mentally slower than your average person, in fact he preferred people to think that about him, but he knew Seeal was mocking rather than thinking him slow. He suspected she didn't really understand what he was asking her.

"You could have arranged that _trade_ in any number of many ways," he explained to her, watching her carefully. "You could have dealt with Emmagan on Athos, with the Elite via subspace." There was a flicker of movement in Seeal's left cheek. "I want to know _why_ you're on _this_ ship _now_," he asked her slowly.

The tiniest of frowns appeared between Seeal's neatly manicured eyebrows and her cheek twitched slightly again. Either she hadn't thought of those alternatives, which he highly doubted considering her intelligence, or he had finally hit a nerve. Good.

She glanced away, appearing as if she was considering telling him the truth, but he actually suspected her mind was working quickly. That sense of repressed cautious vulnerability was back again, lingering under her usual sarcastic confidence. His question had drawn that back into play, their banter having distracted her.

She looked back at him, her eyes narrowed and her expression shifting. He had seen that expression before, the last time when they had been stood in the corridor outside her former cell when she had been released from this ship. It had been the same expression he had seen when she had confronted Ulfur on Feldu, and again when she had finally walked away from her brother on their homeworld. It was a moment of openness, fleetingly seen, but an abrupt window to the raw direct emotions beneath.

The expression had lasted all of a second now, but she had begun talking before it had disappeared. "I don't have anywhere else to go."

The words had been said simply, but he sensed they were difficult for her to say.

He watched her carefully though. Another common technique used by women was to pull on a male's instinctive urge to protect and provide. He didn't have that reaction, but he wondered if she was trying to manipulate him.

"A woman with your contacts?" He asked her, making his tone very doubtful. "Your knowledge could easily buy you a bed somewhere." To see how she would react, he had put just a touch of emphasis on the word 'bed' to imply she could have whored herself out to Creass' competitors. He suspected he knew how she would react, but wanted to find out anyway.

Just as he had predicted, anger descended over her instantly, like a dark vicious cloud, as her expression hardened. "I _don't_ sell myself like that."

"Says the woman who refused to give up Creass' location despite knowing what he is and what he'll end up doing," he pushed, testing her.

"You don't know what he'll do now," she argued, her expression still dark. "_He_ doesn't know," she added with what looked like frustrated annoyance at her 'former' employer. "And you can believe whatever you want about my relationship with Creass, but I'm never going to tell you where he is." She smiled at her last point, enjoying that powerful fact she had over him.

Oneakka leant forward a fraction. "I'll get him eventually."

She sighed heavily "Don't you have Wraith to kill, lives to save?" She asked pointedly. "I would have thought that would be far more important to you than where Creass is hiding."

Anger of his own rose up at her question. This woman, hardly a beacon of virtue and honour, was implying he wasn't doing his job! But, he held tight control of that anger, knowing she had provoked it on purpose.

"Both The Traitor and Creass were collaborators with the Wraith," he stated as explanation for his hunt, annoyed that he felt he had to make the point at all.

"Creass didn't know he was helping a Wraith, and don't pretend that he could have known, because _you_ didn't know what Khor was," she pointed out annoyingly. She seemed calm and confident again, pushing him now.

"Someone could ask why you're still so loyal to Creass," he returned to the former subject, getting back to pushing her.

"I told you why," she replied, one long forearm laid over the table so that she could lean forcefully forward. "He gave me a home and a job when I needed it most."

Oneakka wondered what else Creass might have given her over the last ten years. She might say she wasn't Creass' lover, now or in the past, but she had a lot of loyalty for that criminal scum. She could still be working for Creass, sent back to the Sythus to gain all the information she could about the Elite.

"Which is where I find myself again," Seeal added. "Without anywhere to go."

He narrowed his eyes at that repeated statement that he didn't believe for a second. "That might have been true ten years ago before Dreamstation, but not now. Pyaban won't be the only one who wants to 'buy' your services."

She sat back in her chair, folding her long forearms across the table in front of her once more. "Of course," she admitted. "But, as you so eloquently pointed out to me before I left here last time, I need to start making better choices with my life."

Eloquent? No one had ever said _that_ about him! She was probably being sarcastic.

"And," she continued with a sigh, "after having been _forced_ to spend a couple of days with Elite, culminating in being caught up in the middle of a full scale war on the Glisi world, I am seeing things a little differently."

He narrowed his eyes at her. "Differently?" He found himself asking, actually wanting to understand.

She lifted her eyebrows at him as if he had asked a stupid question. "Fighting the Wraith might be a normal thing for you, but for the rest of us mere mortals, it makes an impression when you find yourself facing a hoard of Wraith tearing at you through the trees intent on killing you as quickly and horribly as possible."

Okay he could understand that part, maybe.

"It makes you think about the bigger picture, and question which side you're ultimately on," she continued. "And no, I'm not saying that Creass or any of his associates work with the Wraith; far from it. I'm saying that maybe, perhaps, there is such a thing as working for good or for bad people. I'm not saying I believe the galaxy can be split into right and wrong, black and white, it's not that simple and it's never going to be," she added sternly as if he had argued with her. "I grew up in a world of grey; there was no clear right and wrong. There was just the need to survive. Sometimes you have to steal food, or inform on your previous employer-"

"Who is as criminal," Oneakka interrupted, "and therefore isn't worthy of loyalty."

She signed loudly. "It really is that simple for you isn't it? It's just good or bad, people are either evil or perfect and there's nothing in between, no going back."

"No," he protested, "I'm not naive. Elite make choices everyday that may cost lives as well as save them. You don't think we see the 'grey'? That we don't see things that we have to ignore in order to keep on with our work? We see people at their worst. I've seen family left behind to Wraith so others can live, friends fighting each other to get out of a doorway first, and people treading on children in their desperation to get away from a culling or a collapsing wall. We see what is left behind, the withered husks of babies, of the elderly, and of those killed by another hand, left in the ruins to cover a murder. The Elite know more than most what life is like living on the edge of death."

Seeal looked back at him in silence, her eyes seemingly both enlightened by what he had shared, but also haunted. He knew that look – he saw it too often. It was a look of a person who had seen the same things, had seen humanity in the gutter; seen people doing what they swore they would never do, but did anyway to survive. It was that experienced knowledge that escaping away from the Wraith meant leaving others behind you. Someone was always fed upon in a culling, it was just who was the slowest to run away.

He suspected she had seen more than her fair share living on the streets as a child. Not just what people did to each other, but what the Wraith would always do. She would have seen the remains of the fed upon younger smaller children who hadn't been able to keep up or who had been too scared to run. In Oneakka's experience, living through those kinds of events did one of two things to people - they either became determined to do something to stop the Wraith, or, more commonly, they tried to forget.

Seeal would have been in the second category.

She would have seen terrible things, but those experiences had hardened her, as it did to so many, including him. She had turned her focus to saving herself, surviving whatever the cost, and fortunately for her, she had the skills, speed, and intelligence to have done so successfully. Many were not as lucky.

She looked away, breaking their eye contact, and he saw that expression again. That brief view through the walls to the woman beneath. A woman who had seen her horrors. Her gaze moved over the screen on the tabletop, over whatever it was she was working on for Tyoosi and the Elite. "I've always said life is about survival."

Her words were almost sad, as if what he had told her had broken something in her. Or maybe his words had simply taken her back into dark memories, of which he had his own.

Except, that though Elite saw the worst of people, they also got to see the best in people. He had seen as much good as he had seen horrors. Not only did he get to see the Alliance Military being so successful against the Wraith, of people, sometimes entire planets, saved from culling, but he also saw the everyday people face adversity. He had seen so many people saving each other in the midst of chaos. He saw grandparents saving babies, friends racing back into hell to save one another, fathers doing anything to rescue their family, women fighting barehanded against a Wraith to protect those she loved. He saw the flashing new determination in people's eyes in the aftermath of it all; the determination to protect their own in the future, to fight against the Wraith in any way they could.

He suspected that Seeal had seen less of the positive in her life, less of the heroes and more of the criminals. Perhaps seeing the Elite fight had awoken that same determination he saw in survivors. Perhaps it was time that she started to work for positive change rather than harden up and forget her pain. She had faced her past in her brother, and had moved on, head held high. Maybe she really did hope to change, to be better than she had been.

"Yes, survival, but whose?" He asked her and she looked back up at him. "Yours or others around you? We all have _choices_." He knew that word meant everything to her; her freedom to choose her future. It was her mandate in life. She believed in choice above all else.

"Choices and consequences," he continued. "So, I ask you, _why_ are you _here_?"

She held his gaze again, but this time there was less in the way. The layers of protection were less than before; some walls were crumbling, and now the woman beneath was perhaps closer to the surface than ever before in her life. Maybe that was why she felt vulnerable and cautious. It was perhaps expected after what had happened on her homeworld.

She let out a soft breath. "I've _chosen_ to leave the past behind me and, as a _consequence_, I have nowhere to go," she said quietly. He doubted the guard across the room would have been able to hear her, but Oneakka had. In more ways than one.

If she had left Creass and her past life behind her, then she was perhaps at a loss at how to live her life now. She had had no role model, or life direction to follow now to improve herself. Yet, why return here? Did she see the Elite as the only role models to make her trade with? It wouldn't be the first time people put the Elite on a pedestal. The Training Facility was full of recruits with the same ideals. Of those who would make it through training, a vast number of them would be dead within five years of qualifying. The Elite were the figureheads of the successful fight against the Wraith, but they were hardly the best of role models on how to live one's life.

"But what I do know," she continued, cutting through his thoughts, her voice returned to a normal volume. "Is that if you've got nowhere to go, then you've got to work with what you've got. And what I have are my security skills and information on all the scum that passed through Dreamstation. I am _choosing_ not to use the former skills for those who would offer me a job right now, but I do have information that you and the Alliance want. And in return, I want to be able to live in Alliance space without a criminal record hanging over my head."

He watched her closely.

"So I've brought that information here, to those who let me go," she smiled at that, shaking her head at herself. "Those who, right now, are the only people I know who walk on the right side of the grey zone."

Silence fell again as he absorbed her words and took in the new relaxation to her shoulders. He felt she had told him the truth about her motives, at least he hoped she had.

"You think that's going to be enough to undo all you've done in the past?" He asked her. He recalled having had a similar discussion with Madesh, who had lived a less than honourable past, but who now wanted nothing more than to make good of his life.

"By the Alliance and Elite standards I hardly seem perfect, but I've done nothing in my life that I know wasn't justified at the time," Seeal replied. "I don't see myself as a criminal, I see myself as a survivor, and I know that's probably a thin distinction in your eyes, to Elite eyes, but I didn't get brought up with high ideals and training. I grew up hated by my people and my brother, and then surviving on the streets. I did what I had to in the past, but now I have the chance to use what I have for a better purpose."

Which was why she had gone back to rescue him, Halling, and Kari. For someone like her, to run back into danger with the chances high that she wouldn't survive had probably been a very difficult choice. One he was obviously pleased she had made, for his own sake and Halling's, and it made him believe her now.

He just hoped he was reading her correctly.

"Swear to me that this isn't a scam to get information for Creass or someone else," he told her sternly, "Because if you betray the Elite in this trade, then there will be real consequences."

"I'm not here for anyone else," she replied immediately, looking him straight back in the eye.

He narrowed his eyes at her, running over his reasoning to believe her, scrutinising his instinct to trust her. She was offering a mountain of information in this trade, including perhaps everything he had been fighting and searching for months to find. She could tell him everything about The Traitor's actions on Dreamstation, who the traitor had met with, when, how often. This was an opportunity that he could not miss, and if she got her clean slate eventually, then why not trade with her?

"Swear to me on something that matters," he tried.

She paused for a second, her mind working behind her eyes as she worked out what did matter for her right now. He saw her reach a decision before she opened her mouth. She lifted her confident chin, the light shining over her deep dark hair, and answered him. "I swear on my freedom."

He held her gaze, pleased despite himself.

"I'll hold you to that, Raven," he told her as he stood up. "Because if you break your word-"

"I know, I know," she interrupted, rolling her eyes, her sarcastic smile back in place, and perhaps a little more relaxed than before. "Save the big scary threatening Elite routine. It's not like I haven't seen it plenty of times already. Plus, I've been back on this ship since yesterday now so I've had twice daily lectures from your Lead Security man."

The image of Tyoosi lecturing Seeal on how to behave was oddly amusing to him, and he was tempted to try and witness one such lecture.

"I'm not worthy to walk the same halls as the Elite," she continued, her impression of Tyoosi rather accurate. "I get it. I've been put in my place, while you've been out drinking for two days," she added pointedly.

He paused, glaring back down at her. "On Belkan with Satedans," he found himself explaining.

"Which explains why you smell like you fell in a pond," she uttered just loud enough for him to hear.

Feeling uncomfortably self-conscious at that comment, and horribly aware that he had abruptly lost some element of authority with this woman, he had to at least get in the last word on the subject.

"It was commemorative," he informed her, which was partly true.

As he had hoped, her expression became more respectful and her mouth closed. She would know it had been in honour of Kari.

"Listen to Tyoosi, and behave yourself here, Raven," he advised her, giving her one last glare before he strode away from her table towards the lab's exit.

But, before he left, she had one last thing to say.

"I'm sorry I didn't get there in time to save her too."

He stopped, partway through the doorway, and looked back at her. Her back was to him again, but he could see her face reflected in a monitor opposite her table. He looked at the slightly distorted reflection of her watching him. Her voice had sounded honest, and balanced along with the unspoken facts of what had happened on her homeworld only days ago, the silence held poignantly.

Oneakka believed people could change, and that dramatic life events were usually the catalyst for such transformation. He had lived through enough moments himself to know that they could change your entire life and outlook.

Whether it would last with her would be totally up to her.

He nodded faintly towards her reflection and left.

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TBC


	5. Trouble Waiting

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**Day One  
****Chapter 5 – Trouble Waiting **

_Distant Edge of the Pegasus Galaxy, close to Alliance border_

"She doesn't look like much, but this darling has brought me fame and plenty of currency, Boy," Uksel declared proudly as he slapped his greased hand against the side of the squat dirtied up ship.

Lynn, old enough not to be called a 'boy' anymore didn't correct his elder though, for this was an important and proud day. That Uksel had chosen him out of all the salvage crew trainees meant that perhaps he really could one day own a ship like this himself.

Sure it wasn't pretty to look at by some people's standards. It wasn't a shiny Alliance vessel right out of a construction dock, but the salvage scout ship was functional. Dents and scraped paint showed the close calls with asteroids, and a blackened corner at the back end by the magnetic winch looked like it might even have been from weapons fire.

Salvaging was a dangerous profession, prospecting out beyond the Alliance border into the darker, unnamed systems, looking for ores and crashed Wraith or Ancestor tech. Many salvagers were killed by Wraith or blasted out of space by other dangers. It was a life of risk.

Lynn could barely contain the nervous excitement bubbling up inside him as he nodded respectfully to Uksel.

"You looking at the weapons burn?" Uksel asked proudly as he strode to the blackened blaze across the back end of his ship. "Yep, Wraith. You got to be quick, decisive, and clever out there, Boy." Lynn nodded. "But, work it right, and you could have an asteroid named after you too."

"You've got three," Lynn reminded him, and then inwardly cursed himself; of course Uksel would know that!

"Uksel 3 is kicking out titanium now like its running away from blaster fire of its own," Uksel joked proudly and Lynn laughed with him.

Uksel was a legend in this business, and that Lynn had gotten the chance to be sent out in here, in the most unknown and empty part of this side of the galaxy, could mean that in just a short number of years, he could graduate to full worker, and then pilot some of the ships himself. If he worked hard enough, by the time his cycle back to home came round, he could have enough currency to his name to refit his mother's entire house and feed her new children's bellies far fatter than his own runaway father had managed with him and his brothers. Then he would build his own house, bigger than any other in his home village. He would refit the village well and show Meria what he was capable of, maybe make her forget about his own elder brother who was half-heartedly courting her. Lynn just needed to absorb all of Uksel's knowledge. He couldn't have been better placed or selected.

"When we're out there," Uksel continued, his voice slipping into his teacher tone as Lynn scurried after him into the hatchway at the backend of the ship. "I'll need you to keep your eyeballs on the search screens, look out for the blips and any readings outside of norm. You hear me?"

"I hear you, Sir," Lynn replied immediately as he sealed the hatchway shut behind them and hurried after Uksel, slipping between a fallen pipeline of wires and two new crates of drilling equipment that Uksel planned to try out on their first stop. This new system hadn't been touched before today, and Uksel's ship, quite rightly, would be first in; and Lynn with him!

"I want you focused and lean in your thinking, you hear?" Uksel asked as he sat down solidly in his captain's chair at the very front of the ship. The thick bulkhead was obvious inside the ship, creating the feeling of being inside a battleship rather than a small salvage ship. Lynn loved it.

"I hear," he promised Uksel as he quickly and efficiently triggered on all the screens so Uksel could see how alert he was, how ready he was to do the best job he could.

"Good, because we've got at least sixteen possible asteroids to get our eyeballs on first," Uksel said loudly and proudly as the ship's engines powered up. "You and me, Boy, we're going to see what no living being has seen in who knows how long."

"Yes, Sir," Lynn agreed excitedly as he felt the ship parting ways from the main salvage ship's bay floor. Ahead the outer doors slid slowly and rustily open as Uksel powered the ship forward.

Lynn held his head up high, knowing his fellow trainees would just love to be in his place.

The doors barely open enough, Uksel navigated his ship out of the bay with barely an inch of space on each side to spare. He knew his ship like he knew his own body.

Lynn prayed to the distant Ancestors that he could one day be just like Uksel.

"Here we go, Boy. Out into new empty space, just us, the rocks, and pure potential," Uksel grinned and Lynn laughed with him.

Ahead, stardust sparkled in the new system, dark blue planets angled to either side of the system's distant star, and sweeping lines of asteroids danced ahead of them.

Lynn had no doubt this would change his life forever.

00000  
TBC


End file.
